The Abyss

Synopsis

There's everything you've ever known about adventure, and then there's The Abyss.

A civilian oil rig crew is recruited to conduct a search and rescue effort when a nuclear submarine mysteriously sinks. One diver soon finds himself on a spectacular odyssey 25,000 feet below the ocean's surface where he confronts a mysterious force that has the power to change the world or destroy it.

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Just totally, utterly, unabashedly irresponsible movie-making by an egoistical madman; a deep sea epic in hangout mode, soaked in Spielbergian sentiment but hardwired through the frazzled jargon of James Cameron. If someone says the guy isn't a humanist, plop that imbecile down 'Clockwork Orange' style and show them The Abyss. Each moment thrives and dances within barriers between safety and death, and masculine exteriors break away into protraits of vulnerability and love. So touching, so dreamy and grounded. Water carries dreadful, elusive weight, but what swims beneath the waves is strange and graceful. I'm never really sure if it truly sticks the landing (both conclusions are flawed), but Cameron's personal vision results in a truthful, at times batshit insane escapade. If anything, this is James Cameron's Interstellar (Nolan obviously loves this thing); a grandiose weepie confined to spouts of lingo and rare slivers of beauty, propelled and carried by ambition.

From the director of The Terminator & Aliens, The Abyss is an ambitious, daring & harrowing work of underwater production that explores oceanic life unlike any other example before it, is significant for bringing several technological breakthroughs when it comes to underwater shooting & visual effects, makes clever use of its claustrophobic setting to create suspense, only to throw it all away with its dumb, ridiculous & frustrating final act.

Set at the height of the Cold War, the story of The Abyss concerns an underwater oil drilling platform crew which is tasked with a new assignment; to help a team of Navy SEALs locate an American submarine which drowned in the ocean under mysterious circumstances & to also investigate the cause of its crash.…

Cameron's ONLY ANGELS HAVE WINGS and one of the greatest technical accomplishments in the history of the medium. it's easy to say they don't make 'em like this anymore, but i can hardly believe they ever made 'em like this in the first place, especially without casualties.

Clearly Cameron’s attempt to make a Spielberg film (Face-reaction shots; Close Encounters similarities about in the mise-en-scene, alien design, and that finale), but also distinctly a Cameron film.* Opening submarine sequence is hardened, masculine, filled with specialty military lingo that he perfectly communicates through the shots, and the director’s bravado specialty of creating an intense physical reality—that rushing water looks truly authentic in a way CGI could never pull off. Those guys actually look like they are getting smacked around before plummeting to a watery grave. Also a perfect Cameron entrance shot: an army platoon empties out of a helicopter with the shot focused on each of their boots until a pair of high heels emerges revealing Mary Mastrantonio (totally…

Sometimes I remember that James Cameron traveled to bottom of Mariana Trench and I'm not sure if it actually happened or I dreamed it because it's so preposterous. I wouldn't be surprised if he found an alien civilization at the bottom of it and is studying them for Avatar Part 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7.

One of the many things I'm terrified of is drowning, after 2 and half hours of people drowning I'm surprised I didn't have a heart attack. Whether you like his movies or not, Cameron has was way with making all his movies look spectacular.

The Abyss reminds me a lot of one of my favorite books Michael Crichton's Sphere. Although only vaguely similar it makes me wish Cameron would have got to adapt it instead of Barry Levinson.

Not my favorite film by him, but I still love it. Ed Harris is fuckin' awesome in everything he's in, as is Michael Biehn. The Science is wicked, and action is a pure adrenaline rush to the nerves. The heartfelt moments are really heartfelt and the message is good. What's not to love?

Recommended! Especially if you liked movies like The Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Contact.

The sheer scale of this film is dizzying and incredible, but there isn’t much meat to it. It plods along for long stretches trying to work out where to go and what to do with itself- all the while screaming out it’s very overt message that the human race is garbage but love trumps all.

Very confident direction from James Cameron, as usual, and extremely intense acting from the three leads - Ed Harris, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, and Michael Biehn. Pretty ground-breaking special effects and beautiful underwater cinematography. I do think the spectacle, at times, dwarfs the story, but I believe this is Cameron's only film to do that. His other classics - 'Aliens', 'True Lies', and the 'Terminator' films - all relied heavily on special effects, but in a way that served the story. As much as I still enjoyed 'The Abyss', I think the effects came first.

The Abyss is an ambitious and technically innovative filmmaking endeavor that features a unique first-contact story where the alien life forms are discovered not in space, but in the depths of the oceans below. The cinematography is anxiety-inducing due to the unusually complex underwater setting, which allows James Cameron to create a scifi-thriller which leans heavily on the seeping claustrophobia to create an unsettling ambience that's harrowing to experience.

My only qualm with this movie is its dud of an ending that feels tonally inconsistent to the thrilling two-and-a-half-hour, somewhat self-contained, epic before it. But despite that it still is an excellent entry that unrightfully gets looked over in Cameron's filmography.

Seeing The Abyss on the big screen must have been one hell of an experience that some of us just weren't privileged enough to go through.

I could talk long and in-depth about the greatness of The Abyss but its all been said before. The film came out in 1989 and if you ever saw the film on tv during the 90’s you will know that there were a million edits to fit in with the various tv channels and their advert schedules. But that was all many years ago and the memory has had a fair airing since last seeing it one of its incantations.

The Abyss has been the inspiration for many deep sea films over the passed 29 years. So let me simply say this, what I really enjoyed about the film is how well it has aged, it still looks great. That’s not an accolade that many films produced in the 80’s or even the 90’s can hold.